She smiled weakly as her pulse rate slowly returned to normal. “Now that I’ve recovered from my heart attack, why don’t we go inside?”
He squeezed her shoulder comfortingly, then released her. “I’ll get your VCR out of my truck.”
Shane carried the VCR into her apartment beneath one arm. He set it on its shelf next to her small TV. “It’ll just take me a minute to hook this back up.”
“I really appreciate this.”
“No problem,” he said, fiddling with cables.
“I’d like to repay you for the favor. Are you hungry? Will you stay for dinner?”
He gave her a lazy grin over his shoulder. “I’m always hungry. I would love to stay for dinner.”
Something about that dimpled smile of his always made her insides quiver. During the past year, she’d become an expert at hiding that disconcerting reaction. She was able to respond with a suitably casual tone. “I’ll get something started. Make yourself at home.”
She didn’t have to spend much time debating over what to make for dinner, both because there wasn’t a lot to choose from in her sparsely furnished kitchen and because she knew what Shane liked. Pasta. The man would be perfectly content to eat pasta three meals a day—especially if he had something sweet to eat afterward.
She pulled a package of whole-wheat pasta out of the pantry. It wouldn’t take her long to come up with a meal Shane would enjoy. She found herself humming softly as she started her cooking, aware of Shane moving around in the other room.
Half an hour later they sat at her table, plates of pasta with pesto sauce in front of them, a basket of crusty rolls between them. She’d found an apple pie in the freezer; it was in the oven now. The scent of apples and cinnamon wafted enticingly from the kitchen, and she noticed that Shane occasionally looked that way with a greedy gleam in his eyes.
As they ate, they talked about the day she had spent with the D’Alessandro family, all of whom Shane knew well. They talked about their friends and the ranch and Kelly’s classes. They discussed the slate of offerings in the local movie theaters that weekend, a new country album they both liked, and the usual mess in Washington, D.C.
Chatting with Shane had always been easy for her. As a girl, she had often fantasized about having an older brother. During the past year and a half, she had tried to think of Shane that way—or maybe as a favorite cousin—but she couldn’t quite pull that off. She thought of him, instead, as a very special friend.
They ate dessert in front of the TV. On the pretext of making sure the VCR was working correctly, Shane had brought a video along. It was one he knew she hadn’t seen, an action-packed “buddy film” not usually to her taste. Shane had assured her several times that she would like this one, and she did...until the end, when one of the two dashing heroes died heroically and, for Kelly, unexpectedly. She sniffled through the remaining minutes of the video, which ended happily for the other hero and his love interest.
When the credits began to roll, Shane pushed the stop button and started the rewind process. And then he looked at Kelly and chuckled. “You’re crying.”
She dashed at her face with the heel of her hand. “I am not.”
Smiling indulgently, he slung an arm around her shoulders and used his other hand to wipe a tear from her cheek. “It was only a movie, Kelly. Nobody really died,” he teased.
“I’m aware of that,” she replied with as much dignity as she could summon considering that she was practically in his arms, her eyes still moist from her emotional response to the video. “It just got to me a little, that’s all.”
He used his fingertips to brush away the last remaining traces of her tears. “Anyone ever tell you that you’re a marshmallow, Kelly Morrison?”
Since she’d always been embarrassingly sentimental, tearing up over sad movies, sweet love songs, mushy greeting cards and even sappy television commercials, Kely had to confess ruefully, “Yeah. More than a few times.”
“It’s one of the things I like best about you,” he assured her, and leaned over to kiss her cheek. Somehow the kiss went astray, landing at the corner of her mouth instead.
She felt her eyes widen, felt her breath lodge somewhere deep in her chest. Shane drew away only a fraction of an inch, his gaze locked with hers, a startled expression in his eyes. And then his mouth was on hers, and he was kissing her in a way he had never kissed her before.
There was nothing familial about this kiss. Nothing brotherly or even cousinly. It was the kind of kiss a man gives a woman he finds attractive.
Kelly’s first reaction was sheer pleasure. This, she thought dazedly, her hands settling tentatively on Shane’s shoulders, was one amazing kiss.
Her second reaction was pure panic. What on earth was Shane doing?
Chapter Four
The impulsive kiss didn’t last very long. Kelly ended it almost as soon as it began, breaking away with a jerk and a loud gasp.
Shane might have predicted surprise from her. Even displeasure, perhaps. What he had not expected to see in her eyes was fear.
Typically his first impulse in response to an uncertain situation was to make a joke. “Well, that was—”
Kelly jumped to her feet as if the sofa cushions had suddenly burst into flames. “It’s late,” she said, her voice a half octave higher than usual. “You’d better go.”